Life is beautiful. There is nothing other than Life. Life is within me; Life pours out from me. Everything everywhere is Life. Life is Being. I am Life. All that I am, I offer in praise and thanks to all of Life.

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This Journey has been amazing so far.

Because I am focused on gratitude, attuned to it, I have been looking for ways to be grateful, even—or especially—in situations that are unpleasant or stressful. I can honestly say this is a new outlook for me! It has helped me find gratitude. More than just saying a cliché like, “every cloud has a silver lining”, I have been actively seeking out the silver lining, things to be grateful for.

If I weren’t on this Journey, I would not be recognizing the very small thoughts/feelings and behaviors for which I am grateful amidst daily life and stressful situations. For example, I had a meeting today that was pretty rough. In the middle of it, I remembered to think about Highest Divine Love and to bring Light into the situation. As I did, I thought spontaneously, “YAY! I remembered! I am so thankful for that!”

So much of the time, gratitude is about things and people, “I am thankful for my job…” “I am thankful for my home…” “I am thankful for my family…” In the moment I describe above, my gratitude expanded into a new dimension of itself: I am thankful for my attitude; I am thankful for whatever it was that prompted me to remember and to think Love and Light; I am thankful for the Love and Light that entered the situation; I am thankful for composure; I am thankful for integrity; I am thankful for keeping my mind on Truth and Love, that it can now think those things all on its own; I am thankful for whatever I have done that got me to this point of remembering amidst swirling chaos and severe misperceptions.

Before that moment, before the moment of being thankful for remembering, my internal dialogue would have questioned this way, “What did I do to get here?” “What actions/thoughts lead me into this situation, experiencing this?” “What karma am I working out here, now?” “Am I creating new Karma?”

Instead of this, the internal dialogue was—for just a moment—more like, “I’m here! Here I am! Experiencing! Being! And I am doing it the best way I know how… and with Love and Light!”

And I was thankful for that! Because in that there is acceptance of and surrender to what is.

I’ve been working on surrender for a while…and there it was! Out of the blue! In one of the most stressful meetings I’ve ever had.

I’m not sure if this had anything to do with my momentary shift into gratitude, but I had been having passing thoughts all day, prior to this meeting, about Jesus. Here are some of the thoughts, in brief:

1) Jesus was completely innocent. All of the charges brought against him were bogus and trumped-up. Yet, he didn’t defend himself against the charges. He just said, basically, “Whatever you say.”

2) Jesus was so terribly abused when they took him…more terribly abused than I have ever been physically or emotionally. How did he endure?

3) Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” “Forgive other people when they sin against you.” “…whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” How was he able to do that? …he did it…however it was done… he set the example.

I don’t have any interpretation for these thoughts. I don’t know what they mean in the context of my day. I just know they were there in the background. And, I’m thankful for that, thankful for Jesus, for his example…thankful that I am here, learning through His examples, as I face my own challenges of mind and spirit, trying to be brave and do what’s right.